Promotion unit for page advertisements

ABSTRACT

A social networking system generates and displays page promotion units to viewing users of the social networking system. The page promotion unit provides content to the viewing user to promote advertisement of a page that the viewing user administers or advertises for. The page promotion unit may be dynamically generated based on content of the page that the viewing user administers. The page promotion unit is added to a feed of stories for the user, and may compete against other recommended actions for the user or advertisements in an auction for placement in the feed. The page promotion unit also provides an interface for the viewing user to promote the page and direct the viewing user to an interface for initiating an advertising campaign for the page, which may be prepopulated with content from the page promotion unit.

BACKGROUND

This invention relates generally to selecting and generating content fordisplay on a social networking system, and particularly to generatingcontent for promotion of a page associated with a user.

In a social networking system, users may administer or advertise pageswithin the social networking system. For example, a user may be amanager of a brand or page related to a business, interest, or othertype of page. These users may also promote the page using advertisementswithin the social networking system, for example to encourage otherusers to visit the user's page. However, many of these pages may beinfrequently advertised by page administrators, and page administratorsmay neglect to advertise such pages. In addition, page administratorsmay struggle with identifying how to advertise for the page and whatcontent for a page to include in an advertisement.

SUMMARY

A social networking system promotes page advertisements in a feed ofstories and other content for a user of the social networking systemthat owns, administers, or previously advertised a page (a “pageadministrator”). The social networking system generates a page promotionunit to promote page advertisement to an owner or administrator for apage. The page promotion unit incorporates content items or other datafrom the page to display a possible advertisement to the user having arole as an administrator for the page. The page promotion unit thusprovides information to the page administrator indicating a possibleadvertisement for the page administrator to use in an advertisement topromote the page. When a user interacts with the page promotion unit,the user is directed to an ad creation page for generating anadvertising campaign for the page. The ad creation page may beprepopulated with advertising content from the page creation unit. Fromthe page administrator's perspective, this provides a reminder toadvertise the page and a prepopulated advertisement for the advertiserto use in the page.

To display the page promotion unit, the social networking systemreceives a request from a viewing user for a feed of stories, forexample on a main page of the social networking system or on anotherpage accessed by a user. The social networking system determines whetherthat user is associated with a page as a page administrator to determinewhether the user is eligible for a page promotion unit for the page thatthe user administers. When the user is associated with a page as a pageadministrator, the page promotion unit may be eligible for presentationto the user. In some embodiments, the page promotion unit competes withother content types for presentation to the user in the feed. The othertypes of content may be advertisements to the user or variousrecommendation units for an action of the user to take in the socialnetworking system. To compete against these different units, the socialnetworking system determines an expected value of providing the pagepromotion unit, and the page promotion unit competes against thedifferent content types in an auction to determine which of these topresent to the user.

When the page promotion unit is to be presented to the viewing user, thesocial networking system determines the content of the page promotionunit. The content may be based on the content of the page administeredby the promoted by the page promotion unit and incorporate content itemsand descriptions of the page. The page promotion unit may be determinedbased on the content of the page, and may further be determined based onthe viewing user's previous actions advertising the page or other pages,as well as the viewing user's interactions with content on the page. Inthese ways, a page promotion unit may be generated for a viewing userthat is dynamic and related to the viewing user, presented with othercontent items in a feed, and that competed against other recommendationunits and advertisements for placement to the viewing user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 is a high level block diagram of a system environment for asocial networking system, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 2 illustrates a sample user interface of a feed of storiesincluding a page promotion unit, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 3 illustrates a sample flow for displaying a page promotion unitand initiating an advertising campaign from the page promotion unit,according to one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 is a high level block diagram of a system environment for asocial networking system 110, according to one embodiment. The systemenvironment shown by FIG. 1 comprises one or more client devices 100, anetwork 105, one or more third-party systems 112, and the socialnetworking system 110. In alternative configurations, different and/oradditional components may be included in the system environment. Theembodiments described herein can be adapted to online systems that arenot social networking systems.

The client devices 100 are one or more computing devices capable ofreceiving user input as well as transmitting and/or receiving data viathe network 105. In one embodiment, a client device 100 is aconventional computer system, such as a desktop or laptop computer.

Alternatively, a client device 100 may be a device having computerfunctionality, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobiletelephone, a smartphone or another suitable device. A client device 100is configured to communicate via the network 105. In one embodiment, aclient device 100 executes an application allowing a user of the clientdevice 100 to interact with the social networking system 110. Forexample, a client device 110 executes a browser application to enableinteraction between the client device 100 and the social networkingsystem 110 via the network 105. In another embodiment, a client device100 interacts with the social networking system 110 through anapplication programming interface (API) running on a native operatingsystem of the client device 100, such as IOS® or ANDROID™.

The client devices 100 are configured to communicate via the network105, which may comprise any combination of local area and wide areanetworks employing wired or wireless communication links. In oneembodiment, the network 105 uses standard communications technologiesand protocols. For example, the network 105 includes communication linksusing technologies such as Ethernet, 802.11, worldwide interoperabilityfor microwave access (WiMAX), 3G, 4G, code division multiple access(CDMA), digital subscriber line (DSL), etc. Examples of networkingprotocols used for communicating via the network 105 includemultiprotocol label switching (MPLS), transmission controlprotocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), hypertext transport protocol(HTTP), simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), and file transfer protocol(FTP). Data exchanged over the network 105 may be represented using anysuitable format, such as hypertext markup language (HTML) or extensiblemarkup language (XML). In some embodiments, all or some of thecommunication links of the network 105 may be encrypted using anysuitable technique or techniques.

One or more third party systems 112 may be coupled to the network 105for communicating with the social networking system 110, which isfurther described below in conjunction with FIG. 1. In one embodiment, athird party system 112 is an application provider communicatinginformation describing applications for execution by a client device 100or communicating data to client devices 100 for use by an applicationexecuting on the client device. In other embodiments, a third partysystem 112 provides content or other information for presentation via aclient device 100. A third party website 112 may also communicateinformation to the social networking system 110, such as advertisements,content, or information about an application provided by the third partywebsite 112.

The social networking system 110 shown in FIG. 1 includes a user profilestore 115, a content store 120, an action logger 125, an action store130, an edge store 135, a user interface server 140, an auction module145, a promotion unit generation module 150, and an advertising campaignmodule 155. In other embodiments, the social networking system 110 mayinclude additional, fewer, or different components for variousapplications. Conventional components such as network interfaces,security functions, load balancers, failover servers, management andnetwork operations consoles, and the like are not shown so as to notobscure the details of the system architecture.

Each user of the social networking system 110 is associated with a userprofile, which is stored in the user profile store 205. A user profileincludes declarative information about the user that was explicitlyshared by the user and may also include profile information inferred bythe social networking system 110. In one embodiment, a user profileincludes multiple data fields, each describing one or more attributes ofthe corresponding user of the social networking system 110. Examples ofinformation stored in a user profile include biographic, demographic,and other types of descriptive information, such as work experience,educational history, gender, hobbies or preferences, location and thelike. A user profile may also store other information provided by theuser, for example, images or videos. In certain embodiments, images ofusers may be tagged with identification information of users of thesocial networking system 110 displayed in an image. A user profile inthe user profile store 115 may also maintain references to actions bythe corresponding user performed on content items in the content store120 and stored in the action store 130.

The content store 120 stores objects that each represent various typesof content. Examples of content types represented by an object include apage post, a status update, a photograph, a video, a link, a sharedcontent item, a gaming application achievement, a check-in event at alocal business, a brand page, or any other type of content. Socialnetworking system users may create objects stored by the content store120, such as status updates, photos tagged by users to be associatedwith other objects in the social networking system, events, groups orapplications. In some embodiments, objects are received from third-partyapplications or third-party applications separate from the socialnetworking system 110. In one embodiment, objects in the content store120 represent single pieces of content, or content “items.” Hence, usersof the social networking system 110 are encouraged to communicate witheach other by posting content items of various types of media throughvarious communication channels. This increases the amount of interactionof users with each other and increases the frequency with which usersinteract within the social networking system 110.

One or more advertisement requests (“ad requests”) are included in thecontent store 120. An advertisement request includes advertisementcontent and a bid amount. The ad requests may be a page of anadvertising campaign by an advertiser. The advertisement content istext, image, audio, video, or any other suitable data presented to auser. In various embodiments, the advertisement content also includes alanding page specifying a network address to which a user is directedwhen the advertisement is accessed, which may include a page on thesocial networking system 110. The bid amount is associated with anadvertisement by an advertiser and is used to determine an expectedvalue, such as monetary compensation, provided by an advertiser to thesocial networking system 110 if the advertisement is presented to auser, if the advertisement receives a user interaction, or based on anyother suitable condition. For example, the bid amount specifies amonetary amount that the social networking system 110 receives from theadvertiser if the advertisement is displayed and the expected value isdetermined by multiplying the bid amount by a probability of theadvertisement being accessed. The advertising campaign may also specifya budget and duration to present advertisements associated with theadvertising campaign. As the time specified in the advertising campaignproceeds, the bid amount for ad requests may be adjusted upwards ordownwards based on the performance of the advertisement to pace thedisplay of the advertisement to advertisers and increase the likelihoodthat the budget is effectively spent during the advertising campaign.

Additionally, an advertisement request may include one or more targetingcriteria specified by the advertiser. Targeting criteria included in anadvertisement request specify one or more characteristics of userseligible to be presented with content in the advertisement request. Forexample, targeting criteria are a filter to apply to fields of a userprofile, edges, and/or actions associated with a user to identify usershaving user profile information, edges or actions satisfying at leastone of the targeting criteria. Hence, the targeting criteria allow anadvertiser to identify groups of users matching specific targetingcriteria, simplifying subsequent distribution of content to groups ofusers.

In one embodiment, the targeting criteria may specify actions or typesof connections between a user and another user or object of the socialnetworking system 110. The targeting criteria may also specifyinteractions between a user and objects performed external to the socialnetworking system 110, such as on a third party website 112. Forexample, the targeting criteria identifies users that have taken aparticular action, such as sending a message to another user, using anapplication, joining a group, leaving a group, joining an event,generating an event description, purchasing or reviewing a product orservice using an online marketplace, requesting information from athird-party website 112, or any other suitable action. Including actionsin the targeting criteria allows advertisers to further refine userseligible to be presented with content from an advertisement request. Asanother example, targeting criteria may identify users having aconnection to another user or object or having a particular type ofconnection to another user or object.

The action logger 125 receives communications about user actionsinternal to and/or external to the social networking system 110,populating the action store 130 with information about user actions.Examples of actions include adding a connection to another user, sendinga message to another user, uploading an image, reading a message fromanother user, viewing content associated with another user, attending anevent posted by another user, among others. In addition, a number ofactions may involve an object and one or more particular users, so theseactions are associated with those users as well and stored in the actionstore 130.

The action store 130 may be used by the social networking system 110 totrack user actions on the social networking system 110, as well asactions on third party systems 112 that communicate information to thesocial networking system 110. Users may interact with various objects onthe social networking system 110, and information describing theseinteractions is stored in the action log 120. Examples of interactionswith objects include: commenting on posts, sharing links, andchecking-in to physical locations via a mobile device, accessing contentitems, and any other interactions. Additional examples of interactionswith objects on the social networking system 110 that are included inthe action store 130 include commenting on a photo album, communicatingwith a user, establishing a connection with an object, joining an eventto a calendar, joining a group, creating an event, authorizing anapplication, using an application, expressing a preference for an object(“liking” the object) and engaging in a transaction. Additionally, theaction store 130 may record a user's interactions with advertisements onthe social networking system 110 as well as with other applicationsoperating on the social networking system 110. In some embodiments, datafrom the action store 130 is used to infer interests or preferences of auser, augmenting the interests included in the user's user profile andallowing a more complete understanding of user preferences.

The action store 130 may also store user actions taken on a third partysystem 112, such as an external website, and communicated to the socialnetworking system 110. For example, an e-commerce website that primarilysells sporting equipment at bargain prices may recognize a user of asocial networking system 110 through a social plug-in enabling thee-commerce website to identify the user of the social networking system110. Because users of the social networking system 110 are uniquelyidentifiable, e-commerce websites, such as this sporting equipmentretailer, may communicate information about a user's actions outside ofthe social networking system 110 to the social networking system 110 forassociation with the user. Hence, the action store 130 may recordinformation about actions users perform on a third party system 112,including webpage viewing histories, advertisements that were engaged,purchases made, and other patterns from shopping and buying.

In one embodiment, an edge store 135 stores information describingconnections between users and other objects on the social networkingsystem 110 as edges. Some edges may be defined by users, allowing usersto specify their relationships with other users. For example, users maygenerate edges with other users that parallel the users' real-liferelationships, such as friends, co-workers, partners, and so forth.Other edges are generated when users interact with objects in the socialnetworking system 110, such as expressing interest in a page on thesocial networking system, sharing a link with other users of the socialnetworking system, and commenting on posts made by other users of thesocial networking system.

In one embodiment, an edge may include various features eachrepresenting characteristics of interactions between users, interactionsbetween users and object, or interactions between objects. For example,features included in an edge describe rate of interaction between twousers, how recently two users have interacted with each other, the rateor amount of information retrieved by one user about an object, or thenumber and types of comments posted by a user about an object. Thefeatures may also represent information describing a particular objector user. For example, a feature may represent the level of interest thata user has in a particular topic, the rate at which the user logs intothe social networking system 110, or information describing demographicinformation about a user. Each feature may be associated with a sourceobject or user, a target object or user, and a feature value. A featuremay be specified as an expression based on values describing the sourceobject or user, the target object or user, or interactions between thesource object or user and target object or user; hence, an edge may berepresented as one or more feature expressions.

The edge store 135 also stores information about edges, such as affinityscores for objects, interests, and other users. Affinity scores, or“affinities,” may be computed by the social networking system 110 overtime to approximate a user's affinity for an object, interest, and otherusers in the social networking system 110 based on the actions performedby the user. Computation of affinity is further described in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 12/978,265, filed on Dec. 23, 2010, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/690,254, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/689,969, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, and U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/690,088, filed on Nov. 30, 2012, each of whichis hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Multipleinteractions between a user and a specific object may be stored as asingle edge in the edge store 135, in one embodiment. Alternatively,each interaction between a user and a specific object is stored as aseparate edge. In some embodiments, connections between users may bestored in the user profile store 115, or the user profile store 115 mayaccess the edge store 135 to determine connections between users.

The user interface server 140 links the social networking system 110 viathe network 105 to the one or more client devices 100, as well as to theone or more third party systems 112. The user interface server 140serves web pages, as well as other web-related content, such as JAVA®,FLASH®, XML and so forth. The user interface server 140 may receive androute messages between the social networking system 110 and the clientdevice 100, for example, instant messages, queued messages (e.g.,email), text messages, short message service (SMS) messages, or messagessent using any other suitable messaging technique. A user may send arequest to the user interface server 140 to upload information (e.g.,images or videos) that are stored in the content store 120.Additionally, the user interface server 140 may provide applicationprogramming interface (API) functionality to send data directly tonative client device operating systems, such as IOS®, ANDROID™, WEBOS®or RIM®.

The user interface server 140 generates user interfaces, such as webpages, with content from the social networking system 110. The userinterfaces are displayed to the user through a client device 100 andnetwork 105. The user interfaces provided by the user interface server140 allows a user to generate content items and interact with contentitems stored by the content store 120. For example, a user interface mayprovide a method for a user provide text, pictures, videos, links, andadvertisements to be used to generate content items. The user interfaceserver 140 configures a user interface based on the client device 100used to present it. For example, a user interface for a smartphone witha touchscreen may be configured differently from a user interface for aweb browser on a computer.

In one embodiment, the user interface server 140 identifies storieslikely to be of interest to a user through a “newsfeed” presented to theuser. A story presented to a user describes an action taken by anadditional user connected to the user and identifies the additionaluser. In some embodiments, a story describing an action performed by auser may be accessible to users not connected to the user that performedthe action. The user interface server 140 may generate stories forpresentation to a user based on information in the action store 130 andin edge store 125 or may select candidate stories included in contentstore 120. One or more of the candidate stories are selected andpresented to a user by the user interface server 140.

For example, the user interface server 140 receives a request to presentone or more stories to a social networking system user. The userinterface server 140 accesses one or more of the user profile store 115,the content store 120, the action store 130, and the edge store 125 toretrieve information about the identified user. For example, stories orother data associated with users connected to the identified user areretrieved. The retrieved stories or other data is analyzed by the userinterface server 140 to identify content likely to be relevant to theidentified user. For example, stories associated with users notconnected to the identified user or stories associated with users forwhich the identified user has less than a threshold affinity arediscarded as candidate stories. Based on various criteria, the userinterface server 140 selects one or more of the candidate stories forpresentation to the identified user.

In various embodiments, the newsfeed manager user interface server 140presents stories to a user through a newsfeed, which includes aplurality of stories selected for presentation to the user. The newsfeedmay include a limited number of stories or may include a complete set ofcandidate stories. The number of stories included in a newsfeed may bedetermined in part by a user preference included in the user profilestore 115. The user interface server 140 may also determine the order inwhich selected stories are presented via the newsfeed. For example, theuser interface server 140 determines that a user has a highest affinityfor a specific user and increases the number of stories in the newsfeedassociated with the specific user or modifies the positions in thenewsfeed where stories associated with the specific user are presented.

The user interface server 140 may also account for actions by a userindicating a preference for types of stories and selects stories havingthe same, or similar, types for inclusion in the newsfeed. Additionally,the user interface server 140 may analyze stories received by socialnetworking system 120 from various users and obtains information aboutuser preferences or actions from the analyzed stories. This informationmay be used to refine subsequent selection of stories for newsfeedspresented to various users.

The auction module 145 selects additional content for insertion into thefeed of stories for a viewing user. In other examples, the contentselected by the auction module is added to other portions of a page forthe user, rather than to a feed, such as in a side panel accompanyingthe newsfeed or in other parts of a page of the social networking systemin which a limited set of content may be presented to the viewing user.

The content selected by the auction module 145 generally includescontent that is selected to provide an additional benefit to the socialnetworking system 110 in addition to the content selected for the userin the newsfeed. In one embodiment, the auction module 145 provides pagepromotion units when a user is eligible for a page promotion unit, andin other embodiments the auction module 145 executes an auction betweendifferent types of content, which may include page promotion units. Thedifferent types of content included in the auction module 145 mayinclude page promotion units, recommendation units, and advertisements.Each of these types of content may compete with one another forplacement to a viewing user. Since each of these content types takessome of the limited space in the user's display, the auction is used toselect which of these is most valuable to the social networking systemfor presentation to the user. The auction module 145 may query thecontent store 120 for ad requests for which the viewing user meets thetargeting criteria, and adds these ad requests to the auction. To addrecommendation units and promotion units to the auction, these may alsobe scored as described below and similarly added to the auction. Afterthe auction, the selected content is presented to the user in the spacefor which the auction was run.

A social networking system provides one or more recommendation units toits users to increase user interaction with the social networkingsystem. A recommendation unit suggests one or more actions a userviewing the recommendation unit to increase the viewing user'sinteraction with the social networking system. For example, arecommendation unit provides a suggestion for the viewing user toestablish a connection with another user as well as a link enabling theuser to do so. In other examples, a recommendation unit encourages theviewing user to invite a friend to an event, identify a friend in aphoto, join a group, or perform another suitable action with the socialnetworking system. Each recommendation unit is associated with a scorebased on a value of the viewing user interacting with the recommendationunit (i.e., “converting” the recommendation unit by performing therecommended action) and/or on the likelihood that the viewing user willconvert the recommendation unit. The score may be based on priorinteraction with recommendation units by the viewing user, other usersto whom the viewing user is connected, a probability of the viewing userinteracting with the recommendation unit, or other criteria.Determination of a score for a recommendation unit is further describedin U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/549,080, filed on Jul. 13, 2012,which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The score isused by the auction module 145 in the auction to select one or morerecommendation units to send to a user based at least in part on thisscore.

Page promotion units are provided to users to encourage users, who havea relationship to an entity, brand, or other specialized page, toadvertise the page to other users of the social networking system. Inone embodiment, the pages that may be used for generating a pagepromotion unit may comprise any page other than a user profile page forthe user, and may include profile pages for companies, public figures,stores, venues, various groups, and so forth. In this sense, the pagepromotion unit can be considered a type of recommendation unit thatencourages a user to advertise for a page. When a user requests a page,the auction module 145 determines whether a user is eligible for a pagepromotion unit, and if eligible, adds the page promotion unit to theauction. When the page promotion unit wins the auction, the auctionmodule 145 may request generation of a particular page promotion unitfrom the promotion unit generation module 150. In other examples, ratherthan auctioning the page promotion unit as a type (i.e., without thecontents of the page promotion unit), the promotion unit generationmodule 150 generates one or more candidate page promotion units for oneor more pages associated with the user, each of which is individuallyscored and entered to the auction. In addition to pages on the socialnetworking system, the pages used for a page promotion unit may alsoinclude pages on another website or system associated with a user orpreviously advertised by the user on the social networking system 110.

To be eligible for a page promotion unit, the auction module 145identifies pages associated with the user, and may request a candidatepage promotion unit from promotion unit generation module 150 for eachpage. In some embodiments, the user may be eligible when the user is apage administrator for a page, and has permissions to manage or postcontent items to the page, advertise for the page, or otherwise beassociated with permissions of the page in addition to a normal user'spermissions. Eligibility for a page promotion unit may also be based ona user's prior activity with respect to the page or prior promotion(e.g., advertising) for the page. For example, a user may not beeligible if a user has recently advertised for the page, but eligible ifno advertisements have been run for the page in the last month. In someembodiments, the user is not eligible if the page currently has anadvertising request active for the page. In other examples, the auctionmodule 145 determines eligibility for the page based on activity andcontent associated with the page. In various examples, the page is noteligible when it does not have sufficient content (i.e., fewer than athreshold number of content items), the page does not have any imagesassociated with the page, or the page has no description or othermetadata.

Each page promotion unit may also be scored for inclusion in theauction. The score for the page promotion unit may be based on thelikelihood that a viewing user will interact with the page promotionunit, the expected value of any advertising campaigns provided by theviewing user when interacting with the page promotion unit, the contentincluded in the page promotion unit, and other factors for valuing thepage promotion unit.

The promotion unit generation module 150 generates the page promotionunit for a viewing user. After identifying the viewing user and the pagethat the viewing user may advertise (i.e., the page offered forpromotion to the viewing user), the promotion unit generation modulegenerates a sample advertisement for the page for display to the viewinguser. The sample advertisement provides information to the viewing userreflecting a possible advertisement that the viewing user may use topromote the advertisement. The sample advertisement may include contentfrom the promoted page, and may include advertising content previouslyused by the page in a prior advertising request. This content mayinclude a description of the page, a cover or banner of the page, andinformation from one or more content items of the page. For example, thesample advertisement may include a title, body, image, and otherelements for the advertisement. Further example methods of generating asample advertisement are provided in U.S. application Ser. No.14/102,794, titled “Simplified Creation of Advertisements for ObjectsMaintained by a Social Networking System,” the contents of which arehereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. The particularcontent selected for the sample advertisement may also be based on theviewing user. For example, the viewing user's relationship to thecontent items may affect which content related to the page is selectedfor the page promotion unit. The promotion unit generation module 150may select such content items based on a viewing user's affinity for thecontent items posted at the page, or may select content items based on aviewing user's activity with respect to the page. For example, thepromotion unit generation may include content items that were generatedor posted by the viewing user, or content items that were recently addedby to the page, or that relate to topics or interests of interest to theviewing user.

The page promotion unit also includes an interface for the user toinitiate an advertising campaign (i.e., with one or more ad requests)from the promotion unit. When the user interacts with the interface toinitiate the advertising campaign, the advertising campaign module 155provides an interface for the user to select content and parameters ofthe advertising campaign. The advertising campaign module provides apurchase flow for the advertiser to select targeting criteria, a budget,advertising content, and other details of the advertising campaign.After the user interacts with the advertising campaign module andinitiates the advertising campaign, the advertising campaign and itsrelated ad requests are added to the content store 120 and may beselected by the auction module 145 to be provided to other users of thesocial networking system 110.

The advertising campaign module 155 may use the promotion unit toprepopulate the advertising content for the advertisement. That is, thesample ad provided in the promotion unit is used in some embodiments asthe advertisement for an advertiser to initiate the advertisingcampaign. The advertising campaign module 155 may also automaticallyprovide targeting criteria and other details to the user, for examplebased on a previous advertising campaign initiated by the viewing user.In other examples, the advertising campaign module 155 generatesrecommended targeting criteria, for example as described in U.S.application Ser. No. 14/102,794, incorporated by reference above.

When a viewing user is presented with the page promotion unit, the usermay thus interact with the page promotion unit to promote the pageassociated with the viewing user, and interact with the page provided bythe advertising campaign module to initiate an ad campaign quickly.Because the ad content of the advertising campaign can match the samplein the ad promotion unit and the targeting criteria and other detailscan be automatically generated and recommended to the user, the user cancreate an advertisement campaign as suggested by the page promotion unitquickly and easily.

FIG. 2 illustrates a sample user interface of a feed of stories 220including a page promotion unit 240, according to one embodiment. Theuser interface may include a sidebar 200, a posting interface 210, andthe feed of stories 220.

The sidebar 200 provides information to the user and may providenavigation to other pages and areas of the social networking system. Ofparticular interest, the sidebar may include various information for theuser, including a set of pages 202 for the user, of which the user maybe an administrator. In this example, the viewing user is a page managerof “DJ Sports Bar” 204, and the sidebar may indicate an option for theuser to manage that page.

The posting interface 210 provides an interface for a user to enterstatus or other information to the social networking system to post anew content item. The posting interface 210 may also allow a user toenter video, images, a location, and other information related to theuser for display to other users of the social networking system 210.

The feed 220 provides a list of stories 230 for the user, such as astatus update 230A and a video 230B, which may be selected from amongmany content items or stories related to other users of the socialnetworking system 110 as described above. In addition, the feed ofstories 220 includes a page promotion unit 240 including a sampleadvertisement 252. The page promotion unit 240 includes a description ofthe page promotion unit, for example to indicate to the user that theviewing user may promote the page via the page promotion unit 240, andincluding an indication 242 that the page promotion unit provides apreview for the viewing user of the sample advertisement 252. In thisexample, the sample advertisement 252 shows the title 244 of the pagethat may be advertised by the page promotion unit 240, as well as animage 248 and description 246 of a content item associated with thepage. In this example, the content item and description may be retrievedfrom a content item on the page that promoted the page. This content mayhave been previously advertised by the page, or may be related to theviewing user, or otherwise generated as indicated above.

As shown here, the page promotion unit 240 provides an interface 250 forthe viewing user to promote the page associated with the viewing user.When the user interacts with the promotion interface 250, the user isdirected to an ad creation flow to generate an advertising campaignbased on the user's selection. In one example, the user is directed toanother page to confirm the advertising content, targeting criteria, andother details of the ad. In other examples, a pop-up or other displaymay be shown on the same page as the feed 220. The pop-up may display aninterface for selecting the targeting criteria, bid, and/or budget toinitiate the advertising campaign, such that the user can initiate acampaign based on the sample advertisement 252 from the newsfeed pageitself.

FIG. 3 illustrates a sample flow for displaying a page promotion unitand initiating an advertising campaign from the page promotion unit,according to one embodiment. The example steps in this flow may beperformed by components of the social networking system, such as theuser interface server 140, the auction module 145, the promotion unitgeneration module 150, and the advertising campaign module 155.

The social networking system 110 receives a request 300 for a feed froma client device 100. In alternatively, rather than a feed, the socialnetworking system 110 identifies another location or slot in a userinterface in which a page promotion unit may be inserted. Next, theviewing user requesting the feed or other location for the promotionunit is determined and the social networking system determines whetherthe user is eligible for a page promotion unit. As indicated above, theuser may be eligible when the user has an administrative role withrespect to a page, or has previously advertised for the page, amongother eligibility criteria that may be applied. In some examples, ascore for the page promotion unit is determined 320 and auctioned 330 todetermine whether a page promotion unit or another type of content (suchas an ad or a recommendation unit) will be presented in the feed orslot. After determining that the page promotion unit will be presentedto the user, the page promotion unit may be generated 340. The contentof the page promotion unit may be generated 340 prior to the auction, inwhich case the score may be based on the content of the page promotionunit itself. In other examples, the page promotion unit may be presentedwithout an auction for other types of content.

To generate the page promotion unit 340, the social networking system110 may analyze prior advertising requests or content items associatedwith the page to add content to the sample advertisement for the pagepromotion unit. Once the sample advertisement is added to the pagepromotion unit, the page promotion unit is added 350 to the feed or slotalong with an interface element for the user to initiate an advertisingcampaign. Once the user interacts with the page promotion unit, anadvertising campaign interface is presented 360 to the user for the userto provide details on the advertising campaign for the user to confirmthe targeting criteria, advertising content, budget, and any otherdetails for the advertising campaign. The advertising campaign is theninitiated 370 and the advertisements may be provided to other users ofthe social networking system 110.

The foregoing description of the embodiments has been presented for thepurpose of illustration; it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limitthe patent rights to the precise forms disclosed. Persons skilled in therelevant art can appreciate that many modifications and variations arepossible in light of the above disclosure.

Some portions of this description describe the embodiments in terms ofalgorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information.These algorithmic descriptions and representations are commonly used bythose skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance oftheir work effectively to others skilled in the art. These operations,while described functionally, computationally, or logically, areunderstood to be implemented by computer programs or equivalentelectrical circuits, microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has alsoproven convenient at times, to refer to these arrangements of operationsas modules, without loss of generality. The described operations andtheir associated modules may be embodied in software, firmware,hardware, or any combinations thereof.

Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may beperformed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules,alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, asoftware module is implemented with a computer program productcomprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code,which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or allof the steps, operations, or processes described.

Embodiments may also relate to an apparatus for performing theoperations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for therequired purposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computingdevice selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer programstored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in anon-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium, or any typeof media suitable for storing electronic instructions, which may becoupled to a computer system bus. Furthermore, any computing systemsreferred to in the specification may include a single processor or maybe architectures employing multiple processor designs for increasedcomputing capability.

Embodiments may also relate to a product that is produced by a computingprocess described herein. Such a product may comprise informationresulting from a computing process, where the information is stored on anon-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium and mayinclude any embodiment of a computer program product or other datacombination described herein.

Finally, the language used in the specification has been principallyselected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not havebeen selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter.It is therefore intended that the scope of the patent rights be limitednot by this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue onan application based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of theembodiments is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of thescope of the patent rights, which is set forth in the following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving, from a clientdevice, a request from a viewing user for content items of a socialnetworking system for presentation in a feed of stories; identifying theviewing user as eligible to advertise for a page on the socialnetworking system; generating a page promotion unit that incorporatesone or more content items associated with the page, the page promotionunit displaying a sample advertisement for the viewing user andincluding an interface for the viewing user to promote the page usingthe page promotion unit; adding the page promotion unit to the feed ofstories; providing the feed of stories to the client device for displayof the feed to the viewing user; receiving, from the client device, aselection from the viewing user to promote the page via the interface;after receiving the selection from the viewing user to promote the page,initiating an advertising campaign with an advertisement to be providedto other users of the social networking system; and displaying theadvertisement to other users of the social networking system based onthe advertising campaign.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein initiatingthe advertising campaign comprises providing the viewing user with an adcampaign creation interface prepopulated with the sample advertisementas the advertisement for the advertising campaign.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the page promotion unit is added to an auction forplacement in the feed of stories; and further wherein adding the pagepromotion unit to the feed of stories is responsive to the pagepromotion unit winning the auction.
 4. The method of claim 3, whereinthe auction includes types of recommendation units for the viewing userto take actions that increase engagement with the social networkingsystem.
 5. The method of claim 3, wherein the auction includesadvertisements for other campaigns.
 6. The method of claim 1, whereingenerating the page promotion unit comprises determining the viewinguser's affinity for content items associated with the page and selectinga content item with the highest affinity from the page as the contentitem incorporated in the page promotion unit.
 7. The method of claim 1,wherein the viewing user is eligible to advertise for the page when theviewing user is a page administrator for the page.
 8. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the viewing user is eligible to advertise for a pagewhen the viewing user has previously advertised for the page.
 9. Anon-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructionsexecutable by a processor, the instructions causing the processor toperform steps of: receiving, from a client device, a request from aviewing user for content items of a social networking system forpresentation in a feed of stories; identifying the viewing user aseligible to advertise for a page on the social networking system;generating a page promotion unit incorporating one or more content itemsassociated with the page, the page promotion unit displaying a sampleadvertisement for the viewing user and including an interface for theviewing user to promote the page using the page promotion unit; addingthe page promotion unit to the feed of stories; providing the feed ofstories to the client device for display of the feed to the viewinguser; receiving, from the client device, a selection from the viewinguser to promote the page via the interface; after receiving theselection from the viewing user to promote the page, initiating anadvertising campaign with an advertisement to be provided to other usersof the social networking system; and displaying the advertisement toother users of the social networking system based on the advertisingcampaign.
 10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9,wherein initiating the advertising campaign comprises providing theviewing user with an ad campaign creation interface prepopulated withthe sample advertisement as the advertisement for the advertisingcampaign.
 11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 9,wherein the page promotion unit is added to an auction for placement inthe feed of stories; and further wherein adding the page promotion unitto the feed of stories is responsive to the page promotion unit winningthe auction.
 12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim11, wherein the auction includes types of recommendation units for theviewing user to take actions that increase engagement with the socialnetworking system.
 13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium ofclaim 11, wherein the auction includes advertisements for othercampaigns.
 14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1,wherein generating the page promotion unit comprises determining theviewing user's affinity for content items associated with the page andselecting a content item with the highest affinity from the page as thecontent item incorporated in the page promotion unit.
 15. Thenon-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the viewinguser is eligible to advertise for the page when the viewing user is apage administrator for the page.
 16. The non-transitorycomputer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the viewing user iseligible to advertise for a page when the viewing user has previouslyadvertised for the page.
 17. A system comprising: a processor forexecuting instructions; and a computer-readable medium containinginstructions executable by the processor, the instructions causing theprocessor to perform steps of: receiving, from a client device, arequest from a viewing user for content items of a social networkingsystem for presentation in a feed of stories; identifying the viewinguser as eligible to advertise for a page on the social networkingsystem; generating a page promotion unit incorporating one or morecontent items associated with the page, the page promotion unitdisplaying a sample advertisement for the viewing user and including aninterface for the viewing user to promote the page using the pagepromotion unit; adding the page promotion unit to the feed of stories;providing the feed of stories to the client device for display of thefeed to the viewing user; receiving, from the client device, a selectionfrom the viewing user to promote the page via the interface; afterreceiving the selection from the viewing user to promote the page,initiating an advertising campaign with an advertisement to be providedto other users of the social networking system; and displaying theadvertisement to other users of the social networking system based onthe advertising campaign.
 18. The system of claim 17, wherein initiatingthe advertising campaign comprises providing the viewing user with an adcampaign creation interface prepopulated with the sample advertisementas the advertisement for the advertising campaign.
 19. The system ofclaim 17, wherein the page promotion unit is added to an auction forplacement in the feed of stories; and further wherein adding the pagepromotion unit to the feed of stories is responsive to the pagepromotion unit winning the auction.
 20. The system of claim 19, whereinthe auction includes types of recommendation units for the viewing userto take actions that increase engagement with the social networkingsystem.